Bill Marler studied the dinner menu with professional care as he sat down to eat recently at Ramsay’s Kitchen, an upscale restaurant in St. Louis from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.
Marler, an attorney who lives outside Seattle, was in town for a court hearing involving several people allegedly sickened by romaine lettuce tainted with E. coli. It was fairly routine litigation in his long career of suing companies over foodborne illnesses, including some of the biggest outbreaks in the country stretching back to the early ’90s. That’s when he made his name going after Jack in the Box for undercooked hamburgers that sickened hundreds, killed four children and led to food safety reforms.
